With
the European Union on the verge of lifting its longstanding embargo
on arms sales to China, the Bush administration is putting modest
pressure of Israel to curb its own lucrative arms trade with China.
The Chinese-Israeli arms nexus has been a longtime embarrassment
to many Americans in the defense establishment who consider China
a potential enemy.

Although defense experts have been concerned about Israel’s
continuing relationship with the Asian superpower, they are hesitant
to criticize Israel’s deals with China for fear of being accused
of anti-Semitism.

As a result, Israel’s ties to China are rarely mentioned and
never criticized except in the most cautious terms.

Now, however, because Israel has continued to engage in arms deals
with China, despite previous promises to curtail the trade, the
Bush administration has set aside — at least for the time
being — an agreement allowing Israel to participate in the
ongoing development of a radically new fighter jet, the Joint Strike
Fighter (JSF).

The program involves the sharing of highly sensitive technology.
American patriots have been concerned about evidence that, time
and again, Israel has shared U.S. defense technology with Israel’s
communist Chinese arms partners.

Although, on previous occasions, the United States has issued “warnings”
to Israel about its cozy relationship with China, this has not stopped
Israel.

Meanwhile, two Washington-based policy makers who are leading players
in the pro-Israel neoconservative network have effectively admitted
that Israel has been engaged
in a “dirty business” — selling arms to China
— that constitutes “a genuinely hostile act against
the United States.”

Dan Blumenthal, former senior country director for China and Taiwan
in the office of the secretary of defense, and Tom Donnelly, a member
of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, made
the charges in a commentary published in The Washington
Post on Feb. 20.

Note, though, that the neocon duo didn’t actually say those
things about Israel. Instead, they charged that because the EU is
preparing to scrap its embargo on arms sales to China that this
is — in their words, a “dirty business” that is
“a genuinely hostile act against the United States.”

However, in passing judgment on the EU, Blumenthal and Donnelly
didn’t find it appropriate to mention that for decades Israel
was the top supplier of arms to China, with much of that “Israeli”
technology being of U.S. origin.